Covid Update from Central Office

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let me crystallize this - the current policy position that is unspoken, but how we are clearly operating if you can read between the lines or just see what is in front of you is that we all get it. The wave will be "over" when it has interacted with nearly all of us, skipping or maybe asymptomatically touching some recent vax'd people.

You can choose *maybe* when you get it, but not if you get it. Closing schools just may change the when, not the if. So my position is that schools should not close if the only movement closure does is shift the "when" to a different point.

Those who are pushing school closures at this point really only have a few defensible positions:

1. Hospital capacity - local health dept can insist on school and other closures if needed. Should not be BOE driven and school should not be only thing closed.
2. School staffing - too many teachers, busses, etc out to function. (Sidenote- how much COVID leave exists and how much is that driving the total days out per positive test)


Anything else, really shouldn't drive schools to be closed. Too many kids out? That stinks, but we are in a pandemic, increased absences due to illness are to be expected. Dangerous environment? I hate to say it, but refer to the if / when analysis I posited above. The dangerous environment theory was better suited for waves that wouldn't hit everyone as there was a chance of missing the wave. Waiting for meds, sub 5 vaccines, etc? We would need a clear public health assessment of the goals, the benchmarks and what closure of school would achieve to get engagement to close for these things. I don't think there is the will or capability for this at this stage, and if there were, it should not be led by schools closing before other businesses.

This is not inevitable, it is a result of decisions like, say, forcing kids into schools at a time of high spread. If they are home until things calm down, they will be much less likely to catch covid. If you're in a school of 1000 where probably 20 people are contagious with not-yet-known covid, you're much more likely to catch it than if you go back a few weeks later and only 2 or 3 people are contagious.

"When things calm down" is when the wave passes and it runs out of hosts to infect. I'm not a COVID denier, and I wasn't saying this re: any of the other variants, but with Omicron and with our current national response, I don't see a lot of other REALISTIC options. I see options, I just don't find them particularly realistic.

Unless you have evidence that Omicron reinfects people again quickly after infection, there's no reason to expect this. Why would Omicron magically have to infect 100% of the population before it settles down? It will infect a large share of people who *have* to interact with lots of other people and don't have adequate masks/ventilation/etc to protect themselves, but once it gets through those people, everyone else's chance of catching it will fall significantly. Why not let kids be in the second group rather than the first?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let me crystallize this - the current policy position that is unspoken, but how we are clearly operating if you can read between the lines or just see what is in front of you is that we all get it. The wave will be "over" when it has interacted with nearly all of us, skipping or maybe asymptomatically touching some recent vax'd people.

You can choose *maybe* when you get it, but not if you get it. Closing schools just may change the when, not the if. So my position is that schools should not close if the only movement closure does is shift the "when" to a different point.

Those who are pushing school closures at this point really only have a few defensible positions:

1. Hospital capacity - local health dept can insist on school and other closures if needed. Should not be BOE driven and school should not be only thing closed.
2. School staffing - too many teachers, busses, etc out to function. (Sidenote- how much COVID leave exists and how much is that driving the total days out per positive test)


Anything else, really shouldn't drive schools to be closed. Too many kids out? That stinks, but we are in a pandemic, increased absences due to illness are to be expected. Dangerous environment? I hate to say it, but refer to the if / when analysis I posited above. The dangerous environment theory was better suited for waves that wouldn't hit everyone as there was a chance of missing the wave. Waiting for meds, sub 5 vaccines, etc? We would need a clear public health assessment of the goals, the benchmarks and what closure of school would achieve to get engagement to close for these things. I don't think there is the will or capability for this at this stage, and if there were, it should not be led by schools closing before other businesses.

This is not inevitable, it is a result of decisions like, say, forcing kids into schools at a time of high spread. If they are home until things calm down, they will be much less likely to catch covid. If you're in a school of 1000 where probably 20 people are contagious with not-yet-known covid, you're much more likely to catch it than if you go back a few weeks later and only 2 or 3 people are contagious.

"When things calm down" is when the wave passes and it runs out of hosts to infect. I'm not a COVID denier, and I wasn't saying this re: any of the other variants, but with Omicron and with our current national response, I don't see a lot of other REALISTIC options. I see options, I just don't find them particularly realistic.

Unless you have evidence that Omicron reinfects people again quickly after infection, there's no reason to expect this. Why would Omicron magically have to infect 100% of the population before it settles down? It will infect a large share of people who *have* to interact with lots of other people and don't have adequate masks/ventilation/etc to protect themselves, but once it gets through those people, everyone else's chance of catching it will fall significantly. Why not let kids be in the second group rather than the first?

Do you know it doesn’t?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Summary:

We transitioned 11 schools to virtual based on metrics that now match every school; therefore, we will be changing our metrics. We will not be communicating what those new metrics are, but, rest assured, we are working hard at whatever it is you think we should be focusing on. We havent done anything new to protect staff or students, so we will send home some test kids and request that parents and guardians administer them to the students and report the results.

You are talented, and should be hired by MCPS and the sort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, here's a real translation.

"We were afraid of the very vocal absolutely-no-virtual parents, because they are disproportionately well-off and powerful and know how to get attention. Even though the data suggested we were in for a sh!tshow and it might be best to go virtual for a few weeks to ride off the omicron sugre, we tried to create a school-by-school metric that might at least exclude at least THOSE people's schools from having to go virtual.

Since wealthier, whiter and more-vaccinated people have lower rates of actual infection and spread of COVID, we thought, hey, we're geniuses. Whoever made/insisted upon this plan didn't consider that purely self-reported data was going to have the opposite effect, because the same people who are wealthier, whiter and more-vaccinated are also the ones more likely to speak fluent English, have time to be highly informed, understand the procedures and have or find access to tests. Thus though the spread may be the same or lower in, say, the Whitman cluster than the Wheaton or Blair clusters, the way this whole mess was designed, the Whitman people were more likely to have their schools shut down.

So we are uhhhhh not just asking everyone to go virtual for a week or three, like we should have in the first place, but making these decisions, based on highly inaccurate data, even more granular and more needlessly complicated. Because there will be hell to pay if Larla with the "red" Burning Tree kid has to go virtual under almost any circumstances-- and we don't really GAF about Larlette with the "green" New Hampshire Estates kids, who is confused and scared and kept her kids out of school last spring because she lives with her grandparents and she can't afford to get sick."

HTH

Look, I get why you think that. But if that were true, my kid would have gotten more than 20 days in school last year. It's simply not true.

The only thing that has ever caused them to change course, or expedite anything, has been pressure from the state.

Hogan had to pressure them to return last year.

And this switch came after the State called out their BS about following state guidelines.

And who do you think applies pressure on Hogan? White wealthy donors.

Who live in MoCo--although I'm guessing most of them send their kids to private, so not sure why they'd pressure him on a public school issue, but I'd like to think Hogan stepped in and turned this around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are so happy to see this update! Upgrade your masks everyone and go to school!

Only complete idiots think this is good news. Enjoy your kid’s subpar education for the remainder of the year, stuffed into auditoriums with no teachers. But they are socializing! (If you actually talked to your kid, you’d know the kids are absolutely miserable in the buildings right now)

They're not going to be stuffed in auditoriums without teachers for the remainder of the year. But if they pivoted to virtual, we know they would be stuck in that special slice of hell for the remainder of (or near to) the year. At least as of today, this is a big victory for many across teachers, students, and parents.

No, WE do not know.

You have no source at all for this invention of your imagination, except, what? That MCPS stayed virtual longer than it expected to when a novel virus first hit and people were dropping like flies, and no one was vaccinated?

Literally every district around here did the same. Some didn't stay virtual as long, but all of them "lied" when they said it was for "2 weeks" because it was a very specific situation with almost no information.

But sure, that definitely means that any pivot to virtual would end the same way. Absolutely.

I can't believe that those of us who advocated for a sensible, orderly preemptive pivot to virtual before all this mess were called the "hysterical" ones operating on "feelings," not "data."

The DATA predicted all of this spread, staffing issues, etc. would very likely happen if we reopened normally after winter break.

If we listened to you, we have DL and a Covid surge. This way we only get a Covid surge. I am rabidly anti-DL but I agree we all knew this was coming. Just like we all know it will be over on four weeks so closing and reopening schools isn’t worth it. Just get boosted, get a good mask, and cross your fingers.

Yes, if you "listened to me*" we'd certainly have a COVID surge, because we were always going to. And we would have DL, because that's what I suggested.

With "your way"-- achieved by "not listening to me"-- we have:

-A bunch of reactive nonsense and confusion from MCPS
-All kinds of predictable disruptions-- e.g., SOME kids clustered in the cafeteria doing make-work asynchronously, SOME kids stranded at bus stops, etc.
-A ton of schools going virtual ANYWAY because they will unless MCPS just decided to completely throw up their hands (which I always made exception for)
-At least a decent proportion of schools going virtual regardless because of lack of staffing
-Most likely more spread, or faster spread in the community and among kids-- who remain less-vaccinated than adults, but fine, I'll put that at the bottom

The thing is-- it's exactly because COVID was going to surge and then ebb in ~4 weeks anyway that we should have gone to virtual for 2-4 weeks. I've never claimed otherwise.

If very few schools really do go virtual because MCPS is saying, eff it, let it ride... people will come out of the other side in February, and whatever the consequences-- because you can't prove a counterfactual-- will say "See, it wasn't so bad, or it would have been this bad even if we had proactively gone virtual, or at least it wasn't that bad in my school, and at least we didn't all have to go virtual!" ("Oh, and also if we had gone virtual, I know without a shadow of a doubt that would have meant 5 months of virtual-- look what we saved you from!")

It's just a version of what's happened throughout COVID. "Why did we close down anything/mask/do anything at all? COVID wasn't so bad. No one I knew died except like one 90-year-old. We should have just kept living our lives because it's the fault of half-assed mitigation efforts that I didn't really follow that everyone is so stressed out now, not the fault of a pandemic that's close to having killed a million Americans. Signed, a Callous and Privileged Person"

I'm not saying you are that person. I'm saying what will happen if this is allowed to ride out without shifting most schools to virtual for a couple of weeks is likely to be a VERSION OF what has already happened.

People who are affected more by mitigation than COVID will blame mitigation (which does have some real negative consequences!) for all of their ills, and believe that it didn't or wouldn't help in terms of COVID, which is "unstoppable," and hey, we survived, so it was all a big farce and nanny nanny boo boo. Meanwhile, death and disability, past and future, are so much statistical noise.


*Very little of our personal opinions could have influenced this much, one way or another.

Ok, let's say the whole county switches to virtual for two weeks. Two weeks go by and we still haven't peaked, or we have, but cases are still really high. Do you honestly think that the MCEA wouldn't push to delay the return? Just look at what's going on in Chicago. MCEA's bargaining position is MUCH stronger if the whole county is virtual v. rolling closures as needed to deal with staff shortages. The next few weeks are doing to be chaotic and not as much learning will take place. For many, DL=not much learning, so that's not really a good solution IMO.

Okay, as the PP you replied to, this is my first response to THIS response.

And yeah, I concede this is at least more true now, assuming MCPS really doesn't stay close to the metrics they set before break. The part about the bargaining position is true, I mean. Clearly y'all were fine taking your chances on possible virtual vs certain virtual and it may have "paid off?" Except like I said in another comment-- I don't believe MCEA would have used their bargaining position to demand months and months of virtual. And now we'll never know? Maybe?

You have a valid point, but because I have a different belief set, what I'm hearing is, "This thing that was unlikely to happen is now even more unlikely to happen."

I do agree with that. (I know you don't.)

The larger issue here is that is not the only variable, as I see you agree, at least in part.

This is a fine tradeoff if you think the "not much learning" in this chaotic environment is the same as superior to the "not much learning" that would happen in virtual. And if you are also not considering the other negative effects of not going virtual in January.

To me, this tradeoff is:

"A thing that was unlikely to happen is now even more unlikely to happen, and that improvement to an unsubstantiated hypothetical scenario was worth the sh!tshow that is happening now. Because this sh!tshow is equivalent to or better than the same amount of virtual learning, in this particular moment."

You can see where, if this is my view, I am throwing up my hands.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are so happy to see this update! Upgrade your masks everyone and go to school!

Only complete idiots think this is good news. Enjoy your kid’s subpar education for the remainder of the year, stuffed into auditoriums with no teachers. But they are socializing! (If you actually talked to your kid, you’d know the kids are absolutely miserable in the buildings right now)

Both of my kids were thrilled to be in school this week! My first grader was beyond happy--came home so happy yesterday. And my middle schooler is happy too and said her teachers have been very open and transparent about everything and trying to put everyone at ease. The staff at both our schools have been supportive and they're all trying to make this work. I give them all the credit in the world for keeping my kids safe and happy at school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Y'know, I really want my kid in in-person school. She's vaccinated, we're boosted, the whole family is going to get COVID eventually, and I'm not too worried about us. What I DON'T want is to watch the slow but accelerating collapse of our educational infrastructure for reasons that were completely predictable and obvious, and it feels like that's what's happening.

Because of an "unexpected" (seriously?) lack of bus drivers, you've got kids who live too far to walk whose shift worker parents couldn't scramble to find a carpool last minute getting - not in-person learning, not virtual learning - nothing. MCPS dropped the ball and now those kids are getting nothing. You've got other kids who live with young, unvaccinated siblings or frail, elderly grandparents who are being forced to risk their family's well-being for the privilege of sitting in a cafeteria all day doing asynchronous busy-work.

Meanwhile staffing shortages continue to grow, so we're barreling toward closures and virtual anyway, but in the most chaotic and disruptive way possible. (The new quarantine guidelines might help, won't be it fun to see if that can outrun the exponential spread of Omicron before it flames out? I can't wait!)

I would have taken 2-weeks of virtual to slow the spread over this (although we all know half of y'all would have gone to the Bahamas and ruined it for us anyway). I would have taken DCPS' test-to-stay program over this - in fact I'd still take it! Instead we got a terrible "case-by-case assessment" of schools once they reach 5% that backfired spectacularly because it didn't account for the exponential spread of the virus that we all knew was happening.

And now we get, "Oh...don't worry...we're doing something else...we won't tell you exactly what, just that it's definitely not what we were doing yesterday, BOY do we have terrible ideas sometimes, lol! Also no, we won't release positivity data anymore, because then you'd know how bad our idea was." I mean...Jesus. I get wanting in-person. I want in-person. But HOW can anyone think this is an acceptable way to run things?

The "exponential" spread part is over. It's been leveling out in MoCo and regionally. It'll likely grow (and recede), but it's already ripped through a lot of the public over December. You're not going to get multiple days of "doubling" (or more) on an extended basis.

DP. Fingers crossed that you are right. But this also means that we could’ve switched to DL for two weeks and don’t start the paranoid shit about not ever coming back.

How is the worst over when Hogan just said that the worst is yet to come

Do you have a data to back this up? I've seen several posts like tbis, nkne with data, and based on current pisitives, it doesn't look like we're done with peak yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are so happy to see this update! Upgrade your masks everyone and go to school!

Only complete idiots think this is good news. Enjoy your kid’s subpar education for the remainder of the year, stuffed into auditoriums with no teachers. But they are socializing! (If you actually talked to your kid, you’d know the kids are absolutely miserable in the buildings right now)

This is what I’m hearing. And not even enough teachers to stuff them in the auditorium. It’s fundamentally unsafe.

They don't talk to their kids. They just want them out of their hair.

I talk to my kids a lot. They want to be in school.
I also work out of the house. So no one is ever “in my hair.”

Don’t you get sick of trotting out the same stupid line over and over again?

That's cool. As another parent, I've had my kid's friends over who tell me flat out they are too scared to tell their parents how they really about things, including how school is going this year because their parents are some THOSE parents. Also, had some tell me they have told their parents how the feel only to see their parents lying about their experience on social media to prove their narrative. Just because they are telling you something, doesn't necessarily make it true.

This is just crazy. I am PP and I don’t even have social media. Those people suck.
My HS soph wants in person. 100%. No question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let me crystallize this - the current policy position that is unspoken, but how we are clearly operating if you can read between the lines or just see what is in front of you is that we all get it. The wave will be "over" when it has interacted with nearly all of us, skipping or maybe asymptomatically touching some recent vax'd people.

You can choose *maybe* when you get it, but not if you get it. Closing schools just may change the when, not the if. So my position is that schools should not close if the only movement closure does is shift the "when" to a different point.

Those who are pushing school closures at this point really only have a few defensible positions:

1. Hospital capacity - local health dept can insist on school and other closures if needed. Should not be BOE driven and school should not be only thing closed.
2. School staffing - too many teachers, busses, etc out to function. (Sidenote- how much COVID leave exists and how much is that driving the total days out per positive test)


Anything else, really shouldn't drive schools to be closed. Too many kids out? That stinks, but we are in a pandemic, increased absences due to illness are to be expected. Dangerous environment? I hate to say it, but refer to the if / when analysis I posited above. The dangerous environment theory was better suited for waves that wouldn't hit everyone as there was a chance of missing the wave. Waiting for meds, sub 5 vaccines, etc? We would need a clear public health assessment of the goals, the benchmarks and what closure of school would achieve to get engagement to close for these things. I don't think there is the will or capability for this at this stage, and if there were, it should not be led by schools closing before other businesses.

This is not inevitable, it is a result of decisions like, say, forcing kids into schools at a time of high spread. If they are home until things calm down, they will be much less likely to catch covid. If you're in a school of 1000 where probably 20 people are contagious with not-yet-known covid, you're much more likely to catch it than if you go back a few weeks later and only 2 or 3 people are contagious.

"When things calm down" is when the wave passes and it runs out of hosts to infect. I'm not a COVID denier, and I wasn't saying this re: any of the other variants, but with Omicron and with our current national response, I don't see a lot of other REALISTIC options. I see options, I just don't find them particularly realistic.

Unless you have evidence that Omicron reinfects people again quickly after infection, there's no reason to expect this. Why would Omicron magically have to infect 100% of the population before it settles down? It will infect a large share of people who *have* to interact with lots of other people and don't have adequate masks/ventilation/etc to protect themselves, but once it gets through those people, everyone else's chance of catching it will fall significantly. Why not let kids be in the second group rather than the first?

Do you know it doesn’t?

You don’t prove a negative. That’s not how it works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Y'know, I really want my kid in in-person school. She's vaccinated, we're boosted, the whole family is going to get COVID eventually, and I'm not too worried about us. What I DON'T want is to watch the slow but accelerating collapse of our educational infrastructure for reasons that were completely predictable and obvious, and it feels like that's what's happening.

Because of an "unexpected" (seriously?) lack of bus drivers, you've got kids who live too far to walk whose shift worker parents couldn't scramble to find a carpool last minute getting - not in-person learning, not virtual learning - nothing. MCPS dropped the ball and now those kids are getting nothing. You've got other kids who live with young, unvaccinated siblings or frail, elderly grandparents who are being forced to risk their family's well-being for the privilege of sitting in a cafeteria all day doing asynchronous busy-work.

Meanwhile staffing shortages continue to grow, so we're barreling toward closures and virtual anyway, but in the most chaotic and disruptive way possible. (The new quarantine guidelines might help, won't be it fun to see if that can outrun the exponential spread of Omicron before it flames out? I can't wait!)

I would have taken 2-weeks of virtual to slow the spread over this (although we all know half of y'all would have gone to the Bahamas and ruined it for us anyway). I would have taken DCPS' test-to-stay program over this - in fact I'd still take it! Instead we got a terrible "case-by-case assessment" of schools once they reach 5% that backfired spectacularly because it didn't account for the exponential spread of the virus that we all knew was happening.

And now we get, "Oh...don't worry...we're doing something else...we won't tell you exactly what, just that it's definitely not what we were doing yesterday, BOY do we have terrible ideas sometimes, lol! Also no, we won't release positivity data anymore, because then you'd know how bad our idea was." I mean...Jesus. I get wanting in-person. I want in-person. But HOW can anyone think this is an acceptable way to run things?

The "exponential" spread part is over. It's been leveling out in MoCo and regionally. It'll likely grow (and recede), but it's already ripped through a lot of the public over December. You're not going to get multiple days of "doubling" (or more) on an extended basis.

DP. Fingers crossed that you are right. But this also means that we could’ve switched to DL for two weeks and don’t start the paranoid shit about not ever coming back.

How is the worst over when Hogan just said that the worst is yet to come

Do you have a data to back this up? I've seen several posts like tbis, nkne with data, and based on current pisitives, it doesn't look like we're done with peak yet.

We’re not at or done with peak, but the ‘exponential’ growth is no longer exponential.

[Anonymous]

Update: Jimmy D'Andrea, chief of staff for MCPS Superintendent Monifa McKnight, said the district didn't commit to daily updates of color-coded school data on COVID-19 cases. Actually, McKnight did promise the updates, a video shows.

https://twitter.com/BethesdaBeat/status/1479524997257437184

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Update: Jimmy D'Andrea, chief of staff for MCPS Superintendent Monifa McKnight, said the district didn't commit to daily updates of color-coded school data on COVID-19 cases. Actually, McKnight did promise the updates, a video shows.

https://twitter.com/BethesdaBeat/status/1479524997257437184

The colors don’t mean anything any more. They could color everything purple for all I care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are so happy to see this update! Upgrade your masks everyone and go to school!

Only complete idiots think this is good news. Enjoy your kid’s subpar education for the remainder of the year, stuffed into auditoriums with no teachers. But they are socializing! (If you actually talked to your kid, you’d know the kids are absolutely miserable in the buildings right now)

They're not going to be stuffed in auditoriums without teachers for the remainder of the year. But if they pivoted to virtual, we know they would be stuck in that special slice of hell for the remainder of (or near to) the year. At least as of today, this is a big victory for many across teachers, students, and parents.

No, WE do not know.

You have no source at all for this invention of your imagination, except, what? That MCPS stayed virtual longer than it expected to when a novel virus first hit and people were dropping like flies, and no one was vaccinated?

Literally every district around here did the same. Some didn't stay virtual as long, but all of them "lied" when they said it was for "2 weeks" because it was a very specific situation with almost no information.

But sure, that definitely means that any pivot to virtual would end the same way. Absolutely.

I can't believe that those of us who advocated for a sensible, orderly preemptive pivot to virtual before all this mess were called the "hysterical" ones operating on "feelings," not "data."

The DATA predicted all of this spread, staffing issues, etc. would very likely happen if we reopened normally after winter break.

If we listened to you, we have DL and a Covid surge. This way we only get a Covid surge. I am rabidly anti-DL but I agree we all knew this was coming. Just like we all know it will be over on four weeks so closing and reopening schools isn’t worth it. Just get boosted, get a good mask, and cross your fingers.

Yes, if you "listened to me*" we'd certainly have a COVID surge, because we were always going to. And we would have DL, because that's what I suggested.

With "your way"-- achieved by "not listening to me"-- we have:

-A bunch of reactive nonsense and confusion from MCPS
-All kinds of predictable disruptions-- e.g., SOME kids clustered in the cafeteria doing make-work asynchronously, SOME kids stranded at bus stops, etc.
-A ton of schools going virtual ANYWAY because they will unless MCPS just decided to completely throw up their hands (which I always made exception for)
-At least a decent proportion of schools going virtual regardless because of lack of staffing
-Most likely more spread, or faster spread in the community and among kids-- who remain less-vaccinated than adults, but fine, I'll put that at the bottom

The thing is-- it's exactly because COVID was going to surge and then ebb in ~4 weeks anyway that we should have gone to virtual for 2-4 weeks. I've never claimed otherwise.

If very few schools really do go virtual because MCPS is saying, eff it, let it ride... people will come out of the other side in February, and whatever the consequences-- because you can't prove a counterfactual-- will say "See, it wasn't so bad, or it would have been this bad even if we had proactively gone virtual, or at least it wasn't that bad in my school, and at least we didn't all have to go virtual!" ("Oh, and also if we had gone virtual, I know without a shadow of a doubt that would have meant 5 months of virtual-- look what we saved you from!")

It's just a version of what's happened throughout COVID. "Why did we close down anything/mask/do anything at all? COVID wasn't so bad. No one I knew died except like one 90-year-old. We should have just kept living our lives because it's the fault of half-assed mitigation efforts that I didn't really follow that everyone is so stressed out now, not the fault of a pandemic that's close to having killed a million Americans. Signed, a Callous and Privileged Person"

I'm not saying you are that person. I'm saying what will happen if this is allowed to ride out without shifting most schools to virtual for a couple of weeks is likely to be a VERSION OF what has already happened.

People who are affected more by mitigation than COVID will blame mitigation (which does have some real negative consequences!) for all of their ills, and believe that it didn't or wouldn't help in terms of COVID, which is "unstoppable," and hey, we survived, so it was all a big farce and nanny nanny boo boo. Meanwhile, death and disability, past and future, are so much statistical noise.


*Very little of our personal opinions could have influenced this much, one way or another.

Ok, let's say the whole county switches to virtual for two weeks. Two weeks go by and we still haven't peaked, or we have, but cases are still really high. Do you honestly think that the MCEA wouldn't push to delay the return? Just look at what's going on in Chicago. MCEA's bargaining position is MUCH stronger if the whole county is virtual v. rolling closures as needed to deal with staff shortages. The next few weeks are doing to be chaotic and not as much learning will take place. For many, DL=not much learning, so that's not really a good solution IMO.

Okay, as the PP you replied to, this is my first response to THIS response.

And yeah, I concede this is at least more true now, assuming MCPS really doesn't stay close to the metrics they set before break. The part about the bargaining position is true, I mean. Clearly y'all were fine taking your chances on possible virtual vs certain virtual and it may have "paid off?" Except like I said in another comment-- I don't believe MCEA would have used their bargaining position to demand months and months of virtual. And now we'll never know? Maybe?

You have a valid point, but because I have a different belief set, what I'm hearing is, "This thing that was unlikely to happen is now even more unlikely to happen."

I do agree with that. (I know you don't.)

The larger issue here is that is not the only variable, as I see you agree, at least in part.

This is a fine tradeoff if you think the "not much learning" in this chaotic environment is the same as superior to the "not much learning" that would happen in virtual. And if you are also not considering the other negative effects of not going virtual in January.

To me, this tradeoff is:

"A thing that was unlikely to happen is now even more unlikely to happen, and that improvement to an unsubstantiated hypothetical scenario was worth the sh!tshow that is happening now. Because this sh!tshow is equivalent to or better than the same amount of virtual learning, in this particular moment."

You can see where, if this is my view, I am throwing up my hands.

I am the PP you are quoting (who quoted you). I do think a pivot to virtual would extend beyond two weeks, but I will concede that I don't think it would be nearly the same battle getting back in the building as it was last year. But parents (especially those who are no longer working at home) lost trust last year and are nervous. I can also understand why some parents think we should be virtual. I would posit though, that a switch to virtual would not stop the spread as much as people might hope because many (if not most) kids would still be hanging out with their friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Y'know, I really want my kid in in-person school. She's vaccinated, we're boosted, the whole family is going to get COVID eventually, and I'm not too worried about us. What I DON'T want is to watch the slow but accelerating collapse of our educational infrastructure for reasons that were completely predictable and obvious, and it feels like that's what's happening.

Because of an "unexpected" (seriously?) lack of bus drivers, you've got kids who live too far to walk whose shift worker parents couldn't scramble to find a carpool last minute getting - not in-person learning, not virtual learning - nothing. MCPS dropped the ball and now those kids are getting nothing. You've got other kids who live with young, unvaccinated siblings or frail, elderly grandparents who are being forced to risk their family's well-being for the privilege of sitting in a cafeteria all day doing asynchronous busy-work.

Meanwhile staffing shortages continue to grow, so we're barreling toward closures and virtual anyway, but in the most chaotic and disruptive way possible. (The new quarantine guidelines might help, won't be it fun to see if that can outrun the exponential spread of Omicron before it flames out? I can't wait!)

I would have taken 2-weeks of virtual to slow the spread over this (although we all know half of y'all would have gone to the Bahamas and ruined it for us anyway). I would have taken DCPS' test-to-stay program over this - in fact I'd still take it! Instead we got a terrible "case-by-case assessment" of schools once they reach 5% that backfired spectacularly because it didn't account for the exponential spread of the virus that we all knew was happening.

And now we get, "Oh...don't worry...we're doing something else...we won't tell you exactly what, just that it's definitely not what we were doing yesterday, BOY do we have terrible ideas sometimes, lol! Also no, we won't release positivity data anymore, because then you'd know how bad our idea was." I mean...Jesus. I get wanting in-person. I want in-person. But HOW can anyone think this is an acceptable way to run things?

The "exponential" spread part is over. It's been leveling out in MoCo and regionally. It'll likely grow (and recede), but it's already ripped through a lot of the public over December. You're not going to get multiple days of "doubling" (or more) on an extended basis.

DP. Fingers crossed that you are right. But this also means that we could’ve switched to DL for two weeks and don’t start the paranoid shit about not ever coming back.

How is the worst over when Hogan just said that the worst is yet to come

Do you have a data to back this up? I've seen several posts like tbis, nkne with data, and based on current pisitives, it doesn't look like we're done with peak yet.

We’re not at or done with peak, but the ‘exponential’ growth is no longer exponential.

Again, Data please or this is hearsay. I'm under the impressikn that the exponential growth that you are talking about slowed down because holiday travel is over and there are less people needing PCR, there are also more people using rapid tests now or even people who can't get tested because there aren't any rapid tests available, with the weather these past few days, I don't think people with symptoms would want to line up outside for PCR. All of these are anecdotal, the only reason why I think this is still spreading is because I know more people in my circle now that were infected, which I've never experienced before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Update: Jimmy D'Andrea, chief of staff for MCPS Superintendent Monifa McKnight, said the district didn't commit to daily updates of color-coded school data on COVID-19 cases. Actually, McKnight did promise the updates, a video shows.

https://twitter.com/BethesdaBeat/status/1479524997257437184

The colors don’t mean anything any more. They could color everything purple for all I care.

Well the point is that they lied. Or do you not care about that either?